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UNESCO Courier, July 2000 p43
Belgrade's free electrons
Youth subculture and music in Serbia
by Dragan Ambrozic [*]
"Tune in and drop out!" The old slogan rings
globally as teenagers, twenty-somethings and
adolescent-thirties plug into music to disconnect
from the worries of their worlds. But in Belgrade,
bands of young techno fans are "dropping out" of
society with a vehemence which reflects more than
mere defiance of authority. In the Serbian context
of rampant nationalism and corruption, their
apoliticism reflects a hardcore political statement
as they create a parallel universe whose members
flow like free electrons through the circuits of
clubs, underground parties and pirate music networks.
Outside of the Balkans, the act of "dropping out"
usually means ignoring social pressures and parental
pleas to "plan for the future" by studying or working
hard to achieve social status and financial success.
In Belgrade, youth are not just rejecting parental
expectations but the probable future of the majority:
deprivation. Only the elite stand a chance of economic
escape in this country where five per cent of the
population owns 80 per cent of the national wealth.
In the last ten years, an estimated 250,000 teenagers
and young adults have left the country, mostly heading
West to countries like Germany, Austria and the
Netherlands.
"We won't be fooled again!"
Only a surrealist could plan for the future in a
federation that no longer exists. One minute you're
high on the spirit of invading the streets with a
united opposition and the next moment the movement
implodes under the searing haze of police tear gas.
"We won't be fooled again!" cry the techno tribes,
who have learned to mistrust virtually everyone
over thirty on either side of the political divide.
No tolerance for the petty bickering of opposition
"leaders" and no respect for the establishment---
neither of which offer a clue on how to heal the
wounds of growing poverty and criminalisation
of the state.
This is not a resurrection of the generic youth
rebellion: "No future!" By creating a parallel
universe via music, these techno tribes seem to be
building on the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ)
[1] of philosopher Hakim Bey, the anarchist guru
based in New York. Imagine "pirate utopias" or
"mini-societies living consciously outside of the
law and determined to keep it up," writes Bey,
"even if only for a short but merry life." For
Bey, a head-on collision with the state amounts
to "futile martyrdom". Instead of wasting time in
the dogma-eats-dogma world of revolution (wherein
one ideology is replaced by another), consider the
joys of uprising. "The TAZ is like an uprising
which does not engage directly with the State, a
guerrilla operation which liberates an area (of
land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves
itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the
State can crush it."
Veritable temples for the alienated
Belgrade offers the ideal terrain for the TAZ. The
omnipresent State is riddled with cracks for the
tribes to disappear in. In fact, the techno scene
literally developed underground: in the basement
of the State university's Faculty of Arts in 1992
(the apex of the former Yugoslavia's bloody
dismemberment). The basement club Adademija staged
a music coup, replacing the old revolutionary
avant-garde of rock 'n' roll bands with the gadget
wizardry of techno disc jockeys. Tribes or bands
of teenagers and twenty-somethings formed around a
common goal: to escape war-torn reality for the
futurism of techno. The underground events were
like temples for the alienated: by pulsating to a
collective vibe, adherents silently swore allegiance
to the positive yet ephemeral life on the dancefloor.
Slowly they built a parallel universe by almost
borrowing a page from Bey's book: turn the negative
into positive. Reject politics not by apathy but by
creating alternative networks. Reject the capitalist
notion of work, not by laziness, but through the
black economy. And so the techno tribes re-claimed
space in clubs and abandoned warehouses. Without cash
for equipment, they stealthily borrowed, bartered for
and recycled old turntables and speakers. Without
access to a record or CD factory, they smuggled
pirate recordings from Bulgaria.
It's as if they followed Bey's words to the letter,
and yet most have probably never even heard of the
anarchist. Ask them about their motivation to find
vague talk of "positive change" and club culture as
"the only sane way of surviving" and fighting the
system. The lack of eloquence can be forgiven, for
these are doers, leaving philosophy for thinkers
like Bey. They don't bother with what "was" or
"will be"--instead they raid the status quo. For
example, in 1996/7, the opposition held three months
of demonstrations after the government tried to
annul their victory in local elections. Instead of
following the leaders, the techno tribes staged
their own carnivalesque events.
During the NATO bombing campaign against Belgrade,
hundreds of revellers met for techno parties,
organised by two 20-year olds, Marko Nastic and
Dejan Milicevic, known as the Teenage Techno Punks.
The uprising floated with the sense of utopia which,
as Bey writes, "envisions an intensification of
everyday life, or as the Surrealists might have
said, life's penetration by the Marvellous."
Attacking the State's nostalgia for the past
"Strike at the structures of control!" exhorts Bey.
And so the techno tribes file past the police and
take aim at the real source of government control:
ideas. Devoted to the futurism associated with music,
they attack the State's nostalgia for past "glory",
while trampling on the notion that money can pave
the way to a better future as the State's printing
machines churn out the bills of hyperinflation. By
"dropping out", the tribes won't topple the government
or change their society. But that was never their
goal. As the underground leaders, Teenage Techno
Punks, explain, "It's not easy to be a drop-out, but,
then again, it's not easy to stay put under the
circumstances. This was the only way we knew to bring
about positive change."
(*.) Journalist with the independent radio station
B2-92 and concert promoter
(1.) The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Autonomedia,
Anti-copyright, 1985, 1991.
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